That's the way I loved you
by tami3
Summary: You can't protect your loved ones forever. Hell, you might not even love your loved ones forever. Sam and Dean, Season 4.


That's the way I loved you

Love is. Well. Love is.

Love is a knock-down, bare-knuckled, kick-in-the-balls punch-in-the-tits free-for-all.

Love isn't blind.

Love is picking out every lie with 20/20 clarity and letting it shred you to pieces without ever trying to stop it. Love is that run-over look in his eyes that says that could have sworn love came packaged with unconditional trust, or else he wouldn't have had the cajones to lie in the first place.

Love is also how you don't know how to tell him that really, love has a thing for tackling trust around the ankles and giving it a wet willie and a purple nurple.

Love isn't forgiving.

When someone goes for your weak spot, you're going to get him back.

So, yeah Sammy. You are so beyond sucker punches at this point. Your brother really does kind of wish he didn't know you because then he could just grab his hunter knife and gank you. Gank you fifty times in the face like you make him want to with your bullshit only hey, it'll only be because you're monster and you wouldn't be worth the heartache of thinking it over.

Because love can get you pretty riled.

Love can make you turn your back on any codes you thought you had. Love can make you lose your sense of humor-slap the joke right off your mouth with the backhand of an ultimatum. Love, at times, can be the only damned thing you have left and it might as well be enough because, hey, when it gets to that point, what can you do about it?

Dean can't suss out the way he loves Sam.

You don't have to tell him that it's fucked up, no matter how he ends up drawing it out in words. They're too close, much too close. Sometimes Dean worries their souls got scrambled up in a hoodoo mixer with all this processed black magic they've been swallowing lately. Who knows how that really works, anyways?

Hunters are, for the most part, beer-swilling, gun-toting, one-minded folk. They have chips on their shoulders, a penchant for violence, and a grudging nod towards cultural anthropology through sheer necessity.

Scientists they ain't.

All they know is based on the village idiot's babblings recorded in yellowed books made of lambskin and cattail mash. It was the National Enquirer of its day. No one's looked into the mechanics of evil and heresy, so who's to say that the magic formula for the crossroad demon heaven-hell-earth spirit-switcharoo doesn't involve blending some of the ingredients?

"Dean, that's just stupid." Sam mutters, too sleepy to care that it's one of the more intelligent things Dean has had to say in a good long while. His head dips to the side and falls onto Dean's shoulder. In seconds he's sleeping with his mouth open and is taking his breath in big gaspy sighs that aren't technically snores but are just as annoying.

Dean wants more than anything to do two things. One: drop a butter mint into Sam's open mouth (they're waiting for a table in a kind-of decent restaurant for once that has them in a bowl) and watch him wake up choking a bit. Two: forget the whole damned meal even though he's been craving a slab of bloody meat, and just carry Sam back out to the parking lot.

Dean wants to get him in the backseat and settle him in their neon-sign rented home for the night. He wants to see the white edge of a quilt pulled up to Sam's chin and the rest of him tucked into a warm pocket of patchwork squares. Yeah, he probably would just shove Sam off to wake him and a grunt a "Screw it. Let's just get some takeout." Carrying him off like a baby or a princess, not so much. But he's talking about instinct, not reality.

Sam's tired. Even if he won't admit it and Dean only suspects, he's probably still double-shifting fighting the darkside. Knife-fighting freaky strong zombies takes oodles of calories, and Dean knows it because he's been there for that part all week. But he can't even guess how far back Sam's power bar gets knocked when he goes on psychic exorcism benders, riding shotgun with Ruby.

That's what gets him, beyond the raging stupidity and serious bad touch of demon puppet-mistress.

Because, fine.

Ellen already proved herself wrong about being able to look after your loved ones forever. When Jo didn't want it anymore, she hightailed out of her mama's bar and into the perilous dank depths of another bar. Ellen couldn't say boo about leers that'll pretend to be about taking her girl for a tumble for the first few winks before sliding into black or white.

Jo could've faced same or worse back home at her mama's place. The hunters dropping by probably had vengeful mojo hitchhiking all the time.

Only difference was that Ellen could be there if it happened. That was a damned important difference, as it turned out. If Sam Winchester had shown up without Dean and mouthed off like creep to her daughter, she would have shot him full of rock salt out of principle. Even if her mind were only half made up about the possession, serve him/it right and it would have given her time to go for the holy water.

She could have spared her daughter a lot of pain, just being there to look after her. Ellen's no clucking mother hen. She knows her daughter is just too damned stupid and too damned reckless to be on her own. Ellen'll let Jo go when she knows that Jo's gathered enough brains to not get hoodwinked by ghosts and demons.

Which will be never.

Same for Dean. He'll let Sam out of his sight and fly solo, doing his hunts his way when he knows that Sam won't fuck things up with his signature fucked-up ness.

There are just…things about him. He can't help nursing a soft spot for dark-powers skanks and careening around the edge of dangerous taboo like he's got a homing device for it. And then he gets royally screwed up the ass/soul for it. Sam's snide about how hey, it works, but Dean's got issues with Sam trading bitch-boy services for hunter victories. Is that so bad?

It just unhappy proof of un-intelligent design that someone like Sam is too dumb to be on his own, but can wire a car or hitchhike with witches to wander out into the open world and be a danger to himself. If the world were right, good-hearted strangers would go up to him, take him by the hand and ask him how they can get him back to whoever looks after him.

Sucks for Dean that Sam has that convenient genius shtick to mask the fact that he is utterly retarded.

Sam is doing this thing where his neck is going at a more and more painful looking angle the way he's sliding down Dean's arm. His cheek's pinned to the leather sleeve and scrunching up the skin of one eye. He looks half bulldog. Dean gives up the idea of a hearty, your-tongue-appreciates-this meal and jostles Sam awake.

The ride back is a good forty-five minutes. Why would they fuck off all the way out here just for dinner? It's where the case took them, and when it "dead-ended" in one of the nicer parts of town right about supper Dean hadn't fought Sam kind-of toeing one of his circus-freak feet in the doorway of a place with a fancy cardstock menu taped up in the window.

It's a residual memory thing, Dean guesses. Jess might have pointed out the place on a Friday date to her honey for its charm. There were purple ruffley flowers growing out of white wicker baskets out front, like the ones in front of every Home Depot this time of year. The slick hominess to its wooden heads-of-wheat sign must have cost a fortune to commission.

Sam could have had the decency to stay awake when it had been his choice, but the "ten-minute wait" had him slouching in the wait-area garden benches.

Dean has a guess what Sam did the two hours or so they split up to canvass the area for clues on the location of a rogue demon. First off, there's no point trying to cover up a nosebleed by washing your face if you don't even notice the drips of blood on your collar right below your chin. Second, if you don't want your brother to know that you did something to deserve a victory quickie, try a little harder to button up right so a hickey on your collarbone doesn't pop out hello from the gap in your shirtfront. Dean has to admit his baby bro works fast, even if it's tuckering him out.

That bright thought sustains Dean as he chauffeurs Sam back, his long frame filling up the passenger seat. Dean let the streetlights slip on and off his face as he drives with one arm perched on the open window. He glances in the mirror to see it again: Sam's stupid tired- puppy expression. Only the corner of his creased eye peeks out from behind his thrown-up arm. That mole only came in some time after he'd left for college. Too much California sun, Dean supposes. If he'd had a natural life Sam might've died from skin cancer.

The thing is, Sam can't know what it's like. He just can't. Sam's the younger one. He had to learn what it means to love his family. Else he wouldn't have dicked around in college for four years while every night his brother and his dad could have been bleeding out pinned to a ceiling somewhere, for all he knew.

That was just how it went with the younger ones. Sam can't know what it was like for Dean to be handed Sam to hold for the first time, all mushy limbs and whimpers in blanket.

Imagine a four-year-old brain fully and clearly understanding that you will destroy anything that tries to hurt this wrinkly, squeaky thing in your arms. Dean's never been able to believe for second that Sam doesn't have to be protected.

There might have been a time when he didn't know why he thought that. When he was little Dean didn't have a face to put to the enemy. It turned out to be monsters (haha, funny), but seriously? That part of him never really changed all that much.

It's just.

It's more than that, now.

Somehow.

Oh, Dean knows how he would love Sam if they'd landed anywhere besides "your girlfriend got her gravity reversed and spontaneously combusted on the ceiling of your two-bedroomer, and then the universe amused itself by playing a shell game with every Winchester soul it could find to sucker angels and demons alike."

In a non-effed world, Dean will be homey and gruff. He'll be a man's man, working a job that involves cars or construction. It'll have sparks and steel-toe boots and heavy lifting.

If Sam has boys, they'll think their Uncle Dean is badass. To their young, soft brains it'll have the alluring whiff of tinker-toy fun even if they know that it's actually serious business. There are toes are ready to be cut off and eyes poked out any second. That's what Uncle Dean will say, and they believe him when he pulls back his grease-stained sleeves to show them the scars scored in shiny white relief around his tats.

They'll get into his space after they come back from school, caddying wrenches and screwdrivers for him in his garage in the perpetual hope that they might get to help. Jess will say no because she doesn't want them destroying their clothes. They didn't come cheap and were hell to shop for because you try getting boys to try on clothes.

And Sam will pretend to be on her side, but will keep paying for new shirts whenever his boys ruin them trying to crawl into the Impala's engine. Then he'll cough something about how they now have a set of play clothes anyways, so what's the harm? (Except for junkyard language that Dean will casually pass on to them, which they will all decide to blame on the TV).

If Sam has girls, they'll think that with their Uncle Dean with his bristle-dusted chin and broad build is the most perfect man in the world. It will inspire totally inappropriate yet totally appropriate first crushes because he'll call them honey and sweetheart and buy them soft serve ice cream cones with a wink. They'll giggle and blush, and ask mommy to please please put the special clips in their hair before Uncle Dean comes over for dinner? And their mommy will do it, even if Jess will roll her eyes and smile.

Before they get too old he'll set them aside, maybe with Jess's help, and gently explain that yeah, they're his best gals in the world. The prettiest ones he'll ever know. But he can't ever marry them. And they might get confused but then they'll forget.

And before long they'll bring boys home to meet Uncle Dean, who'll smile a cool smile and crack his big knuckles while offering them a pit-trap underage beer. The cocky teenaged dipshits coming after his nieces will forward him some cred and fear for the wicked symbols inked into his muscular arms. It's something he has over the girl's lawyer father that they'll just sneer at for being a tool.

Sam's muscles will all be manufactured at the gym, where he goes to keep his endorphins up. In his head he'll refuse to acknowledge a difference in what he does and what Dean does, pumping iron with his own dumbbell set around the oil stains of his garage's concrete floor. And Dean might laugh at Sam's preppy gym membership, his personal locker, and his paid trainer telling him what to do. Won't change how they'll always bench press about the same max, and nine times out of ten Sam will slam him fist down on the kitchen table with his cuffed shirt bunched around his elbow. Dean will totally tell his kids that he let their daddy win at arm-wrestling while rubbing his arm, but they'll just laugh and cheer and hug their dad for winning.

The way that Dean loves Sam in this world is how, say, if Sam's youngest daughter with big blue eyes and Jess's blond curls worked up in ribboned pigtails were suddenly diagnosed with leukemia and dirty-needle-at-the-beach AIDS, Sam will be in Dean's bachelor pad bawling his eyes out exactly one week later.

He'll need the week. He'll make all the right calls for extended leaves from the office so he maintain his rep with his clients and be able to afford the hospital bills later. He'll be strong in front of Jess and the other kids and give them big gripping hugs until they close their eyes and believe it'll be better. And he'll spend some time with his big brain and PC-trained softie heart prepping the speech he gives to his princess in her sickbed about how it's going to be OK.

But once he's done proving he's the man of the family and can take care of them, he'll drive to his older brother's place in his family-friendly van and he'll cry himself to sleep with tears pooling into Dean's elbows.

Dean will hold him even after that, keeping Sam close in case it can drain off some of the sadness from Sam's limp body. Not that logically it's supposed to carry over in this alternate universe scenario, but there's some powerful tree lore about one living thing being able to siphon off negative energy from another.

Or you know. Hell. He might just want to hold Sam like he did when Sam cried as a baby and Dean was convinced that he was having nightmares of their mom staring down at him in fiery horror.

He could have used that, thanks. A tidy little world of pieces fitting into slots and some freaking space. Sam with his plus one and then a pack of little plusses with their monstrous height genes making a whole family of pretty giants (seriously, that girl had been able to look him in the eye). They could have given Dean simple things to care about. Comfortable things.

Then this aching, desperate thing of being each other's only comfort would only be served up for grand occasions instead of being Dean's daily bread.

That way, Dean wouldn't wig out when he accidentally swallows a little of Sam's breath juggling him around keying open the door—really sleepy Sam is a lot like drunk Sam, with arms locking around your neck so he doesn't fall on his ass—and he just feels so relieved.

Right there, things like that.

What the fuck does that mean?

Does it mean that it's more of the same? That big brother/second dad gig of waking up in the middle of night as a kid to find Sam still as stone and thinking for sure the shtriga had got him? Dean would kick back the blankets and get to Sam's side, holding his hands away because there were rules about not touching a dead body. Yeah, he did all sorts of unholy things with dead bodies ala dad's example, but friends and family were different. They'd been taught lessons at funerals they went to.

All Dean had was leaning in close, as close as he could—and there it would be, Sam's breath. Hot, humid, living side by side with a heartbeat in his chest. And Dean didn't think much of it getting into his nostrils or mouth besides not being used to it being there.

Dean can't remember if what he felt like then—it had to be some variant of good. Wasn't he able to get back into his own bed knowing that Sam was alive and all was well in his frazzled big-brother world?

He doesn't know if it's the same as he feels now. It's like his heart rising and his stomach sinking. It's like Sam's spinal cord gurgling lazily over his hands and that matter-of-fact nugget of patience in the back of his brain still saying: "It's ok. You're going to fix this for him".

It drives him crazy, it keeps him going. It's all he wants but that's just because he doesn't know any better. He knows there are better things than this.

Right?

"Sam." And when the jerk just makes a "fuck you I'm out" noise in his nasal cavity, Dean gives him a shake and calls more urgently. "Sam!"

"Upph. What, Dean?" he says, head lolling around on his neck. He looks half-dead with exhaustion.

"Why don't you ever talk about Jess?"

"Iunno. Same reason why we never talk about dad, right?"

Sam's tone says, oh so very clearly, he just doesn't care. He doesn't inch anywhere closer to alert as he sidles out of Dean's hold and topples on top of his coverlet.

Dean stares as Sam sloppily strips his shirt with noodle-like arms, pulling it over his head instead of undoing it down the front. The mark of Ruby's mouth is a blushing smudge keeping quick and easy company beside Sam's tattoo. Dean only sees it for a second before Sam flops over like a fish. Then again, it only takes a second to get it.

Come on Sammy, Dean implores his face down, unresponsive body. Gimme a clue here. Tell me why you never thought about bargaining for Jess's life with a crossroads demon. You could have gotten ten whole years. Sowed your wild oats to keep her company afterwards and everything.

Where'd your dreams go?

Come on, I don't them to be gone.

I don't want to be alone here.

It's kinda scary.

* * *

Sam is going through photos while Dean drives. Some of them they picked up at their old house. They keep them in the glove box, and it's a damned shame that they can't give them better neighbors than Jack-in-the-Box wrappers and bottle caps. But it's the only place they know they won't lose them. Dean wouldn't misplace the car like he would a photo album.

It's also where John would stash the rare photo that came their way growing up.

When Sam and Dean had been kids the people they stayed with sometimes figured that memories were about as nice a gift you could give two boys with no roots and no room in the car for toys. They would get express service at Walgreens to develop them, racing John's plans to skip town.

John would always say that he was grateful. But to be honest, when there were two kicking, whiny boys in the flesh futzing around in his backseat, he didn't care about how they had looked like for one second in time.

Sam looks at one of the newer ones, of him and Dean at what he thinks is ten and fourteen. They're looking blankly into the viewer after being told to in someone's backyard. He holds it next to one of their mom and dad being pleasant. They're not hugging or kissing or anything. They're just standing side by side in front of a generic outdoors sculpture. It's a really good picture for figuring out what they look like. There's no psychotic toddler Dean stretching out his parent's faces with grins or affection melting definite features into mush.

With all the Winchester faces together in his hands like this, it's pretty obvious that Dean looks like their mom, and Sam looks like their dad.

Dean's got eyes that can warm you like a sunny day hitting a stained glass window. He's got this shape to his upper lip that makes a smile easier to see, eyebrows that are good enough to say what he wants to say when he doesn't want to use words. He doesn't have the spirit to make that relevant every day now, sure, but still. It's what he got.

Sam has rough lines making the shape of his face with sudden angles. There's grit and sulk and deep thought written all over the plane of his brow. He's got these looks like he's quicker to get mad than sad, always ready to fight for it before it becomes something to cry about. But the second the latter wins out, you'll think that it's just the saddest thing in the world.

They used to look more like each other, so that people could take a look at them and know they're brothers. It's not like that anymore. They walk down the street and people assume that they had to have been strangers at one point. Like the only thing tying them together are good times and circumstance.

Ironic that it's the complete opposite: the only times they're having nowadays are crap times, and these circumstances would have any other two people fleeing to opposite sides of the earth after trying to unload clips into each other's backs. Blood's the only thing stopping it.

But it's not like Sam's thinking about any of this.

"Hey Dean, look at this." Sam tries to call Dean's attention. He points to one of him, Dean, and Dad in the middle of a park. They all look awful.

Sam gives a half-smile because it's kind of a cute picture. It's a photo of a family argument, with red-faced Sam having just staged a no-explanation-needed (he was three) tantrum. In the picture John's making a face like a terrorist bomber and he's crouched down to Dean's level, holding him by the shoulders. There are two soft pretzels on the ground between them, getting toed by John's boots and Dean's sneakers.

John had passed the pretzels from the vendor to Sam without thinking. Sam had thrown them into the dirt. Dean had started crying.

Their first few years of growing up, a few people had still carried snapshot cameras and would hang around taking candids and then ask for a buck. A hippy-dippy stranger in beads and a bandanna had taken a picture of the scene, free of charge, to show them how miserable they looked fighting. Her way of saying that they shouldn't, FYI. John had just dazedly took it as he tried to figure out what the hell had his older, tougher kid sobbing while awkwardly telling off his younger one for making his brother cry, however he'd done it.

Sam's asked Dean to explain that one before. There's a lot of time to kill driving around the country. If you snag a memory while eating a bag of pretzels, it'll do for a conversation starter. Dean had grumpily run off some story about how Dad had been working a really hard job that time.

Really hard, the kind where girls in the double digits were getting their heads twisted off.

He'd locked Dean and Sam in the motel room for three days to go deal with it.

He'd only had time to put five packs of hot dogs bought on sale (he'd forgotten about the buns) in the minifridge and show Dean the right numbers to press on the microwave before taking some crying girl's call about something trying to break into her house right that minute.

That wasn't one of their Dad's top ten parenting moments, but the neglect wasn't what Dean had minded. It was tough for it to be, when the man had walked back in with scratched up arms and watering eyes. He'd said that all he wanted was to take Dean and Sam to the park. And his voice had still sounded strange even though it was finally coming straight from him and not through the filter of one-minute-a-day phone calls.

By then, Dean had been eating breadless hotdogs for three days straight and feeding Sam the same. That hadn't seemed to bother Sam much. Sam had been in his stage of gracefully eating only three things total. Hotdogs had been one of them and that was why John had picked them up in the first place. But when his little brother ruined the first non-hotdog kind of food they'd had in days, Dean had just kind of "lost it". His words.

Sam hadn't pushed it because Dean, having never sat through a literature class he actually paid attention to, had no idea that he just used an "anecdote" and invoked "empathy".

Those first few years on the road John hadn't had his shit together yet. His wife's death fresh on his mind, monsters victimizing innocents put John's blood on quick boil. That had made it easy for him to put the boys second. Dean had also been too young to have a grip on anything. At that age he didn't have the hand-eye coordination to cut his own meat. But he'd been expected to change a baby's diaper with one hand and still be able to shoot between the eyes with the other if he had to. (And it was impressed upon him that he might just have to).

It must have translated to early childhood of mindfuckery and shittiness for Dean. Dean is an awesome person and should be canonized as the patron saint of good sports because, really.

What broke him was the hot dogs.

Not that Dean talks about it that way, or Sam really remembers it. Sam pieced it together from things that that's been said over the years. Part of it came from things Dean would say without paying close attention. Some of it bled out in the fights between Sam and his dad, where John would lay into him on how he's never had it as hard as Dean but mouths off ten times as much.

Sam doesn't bother mentioning it to Dean because it's not important enough to override the taboo-to-talk-about-because-it-involves-feelings label. But he knows that he's lucky that he was too young to have to live through it lucid and Dean didn't get that favor. Besides, Sam could tell by Dean's "Aw fuck I want to stop talking now" expression that he didn't think there was anything deeper to his story other than an embarrassing moment.

And to be fair? Dean's gotten him going a lot more times than he ever did, as kids and as adults. He's made Dean cry twice their entire lives. The second time was when Sam kicked the bucket.

But Sam's impressed that there's a living piece of evidence of that moment. So when he figures that Dean didn't hear him the first time over the wind, he tries to hand it to him.

"Get that outta my face, Sammy." Dean just growls. It's not the photo that makes him grumpy; he doesn't look at it and doesn't know what it's of. He takes one hand off the wheel to push at Sam's hands full of old photos.

That kind of surprises Sam because usually even Dean isn't enough of a douche to slap around the few material scraps of sentimentality they have.

"Dude! What's your problem?" he protests, tapping them twice on the dashboard to get them back into a stack. He returns them to the glove compartment. Dean can't be trusted to not fly off the handle and throw things important to other people out the window. Djinn-world Sam and his cell had found that out.

To Sam's complaint, Dean just shoots him a look full of daggers before fixing his gaze straight ahead.

"Dean?"

"No talking right now Sam. Just-" and his word gets lost with his violent twisting up of the volume knob. "I can't see the things that make true happiness" Tony Martin wails as Sam sees Dean's mouth working around what Sam hopes is "stick a cork in it".

Sam slaps at the dials until Black Sabbath dies down to a tolerable purr.

"Come on, what'd I do?" he asks. He's whining, he knows it. It's ok. He's had the license to whine ever since he was born. Dean, to keep the balance, has always had the license to have episodes of random elder sibling asshole-ness. Sam hopes that that's the case now and he doesn't have to find out the legit reason for Dean is unhappy with him. But Dean only grunts out a reassuring:

"You know what? Nothing. I didn't sleep well and that's not your fault. It does, however, make anything you do other than letting me focus on driving extremely annoying. So. It is in your best interest to try not to do anything until we stop for the night."

"Okay." Sam blows out a breath. " How about this for an idea? Dean, let me drive and you get some rest."

"How's this one? No. What did I just say?"

Sam tries to reason with him, but he loses sense of what he's saying because it overlaps with Dean snapping, "If you have another opinion, then mine is that you can go fuck yourself."

They don't tussle again because it only takes another hour for them to need to pull over for gas. Sam doesn't look Dean in the eye when he sets down two Styrofoam cups in the cupholders, coffees pure black and a half dozen packets of sugar in his jean's pocket just in case. Dean drinks it peaceably enough but Sam also has jalapeno cream cheese taquitos in a paper sack on his lap that Dean won't ask about.

In the end Sam eats them himself, the thickness of the cheese clogging the back of his throat. It feels gross and he wonders how Dean can like them.

He hops out and stretches his legs when they get there. Dean doesn't linger on his side of his car waiting for him to finish. Sam hadn't realized he does that, except this time he has to run after Dean making a beeline for the check-in lobby of the red-shingled one-story motel complex. Dean doesn't let him follow though—he takes full advantage of their four-inch difference to make whacking Sam with the glass door look totally inconspicuous.

"Dean!" Sam throws a palm up to his smacked forehead. It hadn't hurt, but-

Dean turns to him. "I want beer." His brother deadpans.

"Beer?" Downing copious amounts of alcohol can only go a very good way or a very bad way. But if you're willing to take someone with instead of planning to huddle in a dark corner, it might be a peace offering. Sam jumps on it. "Cool with me. Let's unload and hit up a bar, then."

"Did I say I want to shoot the shit with barflies or get groped by chicks that every trucker in the state's used as a pit stop? I just want beer. Plain and simple. Beer. Go make a run, would you Sammy? Get something good and get it in ice. I'm not in the mood to be a nice about a surprise mouthful of warm weasel piss."

And with that he gives Sam a smile that has sweetness in the corners of his mouth and pats him on the hip. Then he tosses him the keys and pulls the door shut with a crisp jangle.

"… But I haven't got the ice bucket yet," is all Sam can think to say.

Sam picks up Dogfish and Baltic Thunder from the liquor store's refrigerator unit, and a twenty-four box case of Corona in case Dean's just looking to get wasted. He drinks one of the bottles in the car, because this does not feel like one of times that he can just walk up to Dean with two bottles in one hand and Dean will take one amicably. And he does not feel like being sober at any point that Dean isn't tonight.

After he gets the car inside the white lines on the asphalt, Sam tries to walk to their room. He realizes he doesn't know how. Dean hadn't gotten the keys before he left and he hasn't called to tell Sam which number they're in. Sam gives himself some time, downing the last half of his beer and goes looking for a trashcan to throw away the bottle.

Dean is not in happy fun times mode.

Of course he isn't, you might say to Sam. Why would he be?

There are angels riding his ass and they won't even tell him why Heaven's suddenly gotten so kinky. The apocalypse is nigh and he's died like, one hundred and nine times in the past year.

And his little brother is nailing a big deal Satanist-Wiccan when Dean's like, the successor to a church he has complete faith in even if he drinks like a horse in the desert, watches and acts out porn, and um, doesn't really believe in God and uh, well. That doesn't matter, call it the Church of Hunters, then. And Sam's making his life hell by sacrificing cats on weekends with this witch girl, but the cats are demons…or people with demons in them, so that's worse than cats and….um.

Okay, that metaphor got sucky because figurative language can't make reality look worse than it already is. But the point's in there somewhere. What he's doing is practically spitting in the face that everything Dean's ever done for him, and that does, admittedly, make Sam total crap. Sam gets that.

Angry used to be one of them fucking up, knowing it, and riding out pissy treatment from the other because it's deserved. It used to be simple: a few yelled words laced with swears and then grudging civility over the next fast-food meal signaling an end to bad times between them. Sam doesn't know if it's just because they grew up, or because they no longer fear Dad finding out they aren't getting along (which would rain down miseries a hundred fold greater than they could ever give each other). But ever since he and Dean got back together, passive-aggressiveness has been smarmy-ing up their problems.

There's stone-walling, the "I'm not trying to start a fight" that turns into a fight, pleasantly changing the subject when it took such balls to bring up a sensitive one, and Sam's own specialty, playing incredulous at Dean's paranoia that he would do such things, only, yeah, he is. Yeah, there's been a few hookshots in there, but it doesn't count when one person just shrugs it off with a bland "Are you done?"

Of course, Dean would break that all down into "Sam is a lying little bitch" and maybe he wouldn't be wrong.

The thing is, Sam knows that the real fight waiting at the end of this will be of napalm-raising, hydrogen-splitting, dark-matter generating proportions. But right he's riding a rush—and he knows it. Using his powers makes everyone one of his nerve endings feel like a spark plug, fucking Ruby with some of her blood in him is like transubstantiated crack, and he's even still hitching on the tail of the raw animal crazy that was Dean's death. It lets him ignore anything, including the fact that he is an enormous dick.

It's not comfortable. It is so not comfortable. But he can still do it. Dean's feelings are hurt and that does matter to him. But Sam's told himself a few times that Dean been to Hell. He's good at toughing things out. And with that being his operative thought, Sam supposes there really is no other way for them to do this.

All right, enough mulling. Back to the grind of awkward times. Sam reaches in his pocket and takes out his phone. Dean's number is speed-dial number one. Ruby's is buried under the name of a high school boy Sam used to tutor in algebra. Only.

Sam nearly drops the phone when his own slack face pops up on the display.

Nothing like snapping you out a funk about your honest-to-god demon powers than seeing yourself with a plastic spoon stuck in your mouth and a line of drool down your chin.

This is Dean's phone. Sam pats down his pockets, but there no other cellular lump anywhere—did he drop his somewhere, pick up Dean's by mistake?

How the hell is he supposed to know where Dean is now?

* * *

_Meet me at the smith tower obsv deck 10_

Bzt. _Why?_

_Its important. About lilith._

When Dean checks the display on Sam's phone, it tells him that it's been five hours since he sent the texts in the lobby of the motel, and two hours past the rendezvous. Either this "Camisa, James"'s ardor for Sam has abruptly cooled despite their recent history of their passionate texting and calling, or Ruby's just not coming.

Dean leans against brick in an inconspicuous alley and blows warmth into his hands gripped together. His fingers locked around the wooden knife handle and the cell like the rosary of prayer. The digital of Dean's "Its" is a blur on the old metal—maybe he should've included that little airborne comma thingy. Could Sam be pretentious enough to stick to prissy writing rules even in texts? Did Dean tip Ruby off? She had to have been close enough to make it if she wanted to, she and Sam only split up in the afternoon. And if Sam ploughed her as hard as the smutty details of their last couple of texts hint, she should be as worn out as Sam and maybe less capable of walking too far.

Yeah, yeah, he went through Sam's sexts and that makes him an awful, awful guy. But he doesn't feel guilty much because he didn't get off on it, not one bit. Reading records of a demon and his brother being dirty birds together had actually made Dean kind of want to vomit on his shoes.

He snaps the phone shut and sticks it back into his pants. Time to call it a night and grab a few with strangers, just enough to get a bit of buzz but easy enough to sober up before getting back to the old burden.

It'd been a longshot anyways. Maybe he'd never expected anything.

It had just been Dean's turn to run away for once.

Dean sniffs in cold air as he works on getting back to a main street, where he can hail a cab. He huffs out what he guesses is a half-laugh.

He's just realized that he's gone twenty-four hours without laughing. And not just this one time, but several times this year. Shit. That's never happened before on a day when he had family with him. First there was Mary and her tickles, then the back-and-forth with Sam in the backseat as kids even if it was Dean hitting Sam in his baby seat. Even the day Sam left, his dad had done his best to chisel away some of the stony accusation carved into his other son's face by cracking jokes at Sam's expense. Dean's silent, heavy "you made him leave" had slipped in a bout of choking on diner scrambled eggs when John said he felt sorry for whatever poor bastard got assigned as Sam's roommate and didn't have the tolerance for his midnight flatulence as only Winchesters do.

When Sam wasn't getting in his face, their dad actually had a decent sense of humor. How else would he and Dean have gotten on so well?

And. And it's not like Sam's not as good as John. Dean wouldn't rather have his father than his brother. In first few months where Sam was feeling his way back to the jokes and snipes, Dean had sensed the occasional hiccup of worry from Sam about that. It doesn't come on any more, because even if Sam isn't that funny, he makes Dean laugh. His broodiness, the stick up his ass, his dry disproval and his ice-queen insults. That had let Dean make fun of him and that was funny.

Today Sam had looked at him like he was crazy the entire day. As if to say, why isn't this good enough anymore? What's missing?

Damn it Sam, Dean thinks as he raises his hand to catch the attention of a yellow car cruising down the lane.

I miss being able to fight with you without the whole damn universe listening in. I miss me and dad in the front seat letting you cry it out for more than half the day about not getting a ninja turtle action hero for your birthday, and that was the worst thing you ever did. I miss, I miss.

I miss you being your hero.

He misses being golden. He misses knowing that when he wasted whatever was after Sam's ass, Sam would send sticky-warm good vibes his way in the form of giving Dean his share of fries or offering to pack his stuff so he has more time in the shower.

Now whatever powers Dean has, Sam's no longer impressed because he thinks the so-called big hero is due for an emotional breakdown and that will screw the whole pooch. Forget gratitude, forget a little trust, even though, hello, isn't Dean still busting his ass to save him?

He went from Superman to Spiderman status in a year. What a fucking joke. And how appropriate, his damsel in distress flipped the switch from the faithful unwavering support of Louis Lane to the doubtful hot-and-cold treatment of Mary Jane.

Bitch.

But whatever.

Dean's not used to feeling frustrated about thanklessness. Sure, official hunter creed can get pretty self-righteous about how it's all about self-sacrifice for the greater good. They don't get their hopes up for medal ceremonies. But any face-to-face disrespect is likely to amount to a chop across the windpipe, the finger, and getting sprayed by dirt when said hunter floors the accelerator. They're pretty gritty folk, after all. They just don't take any bullshit.

But if Dean's going to take it from anybody, it might as well be Sam.

It's still there, that voice in his head that means that he is certifiably crazy.

I'm gonna fix this for you.

* * *

Dean gets in at three-thirty in the morning. After tipping the driver generously, he goes to ask the desk girl where she's put the tallest dude that came in today.

"No look, see here…" he says when she runs a line about confidentiality. "The thing is, me and him got into one hell of a fight earlier today, and he took off. Darlin', you don't even understand. I was going crazy trying to figure out where he went. But I just want to take him home and make it up to him, if you get my meaning." Dean hopes that the smile he gives her is just the right mix of awkward, disarming, and weary. Why wouldn't it be? It's how he feels.

And why the hell not. There's really only two directions a young motel worker of small-town America can take that. She can put on a stunned face laced with disgust, or she can be as sweet as sunshine in buttercups about it. This one is of the second disposition, but either way would have given him hasty directions to the right place.

Sam is lying on his side in on of the twins, fully clothed. He clumsily shoves himself up into a sitting position when he sees his brother coming in. "Dean! Where the hell were you?"

"Seattle. Here, grabbed this by accident. You got mine?" he says as he cordially slips Sam's phone out of his jeans pocket and hands it back. He wonders if it's his lack of sass that has Sam's jaw going like he's chewing a goldfish?

"Did you wire a car?" the kid whinges. "You know you're not good at that." Not true, by the way. It's Sam's special talent and he can do it under a minute, but Dean has a decent criminal average for pulling off a GTO. "You could have gotten caught. You could have gotten arrested, and, Dean, you didn't have your phone, how would I have bailed you out?"

"I could have tried calling my number. You have it saved on your phone, right?" Dean mildly enjoys the flush running across Sam's face. It's not often that he catches Sam in a genuine moment of stupidity, and Sam's sensitive about it every time.

"Relax. I didn't jack nothing. Its called the front desk has the numbers for the local cab company, dipshit. Did you get the beer?"

Sam doesn't motion to the mini-fridge, but he doesn't have to. Dean spies the several long-necked bottles craning over the edge of the trashcan, nesting in a few gold-and-white cans. Sam isn't trashed, though, so there has to be more. Dean goes to it straightaway and pulls out a Dogfish. He's pried the cap off with the counter edge with a hiss of escaping carbon and has turned to settle in before Sam speaks again.

"I thought you might not come back." Sam says, and his tone is half dare. But Dean just laughs.

"Jesus Christ, Sam! I just didn't want to see your face for a while, that's all." Dean can't help but smirk at how Sam's fighting expression immediately folds. That's more like it. Before all this straight-faced lying and secrecy, Sam always did wear his heart on his sleeve. Nothing better than alcohol for putting chinks in shiny new armor.

But Dean knows he's being cruel when Sam doesn't even quip anything back. So he walks up to him and lays a hand on Sam's shoulder, wide as a rung of a ladder. Sam looks up at him with those brown eyes. They're supposed to be softer around the edges than their dad's, but they're getting there.

He sits down next to Sam, on the same bed, which really makes Sam flinch because usually Dean goes to his own mattress even if they lean over the isle to talk to each other.

"Hey. Sam." He says as Sam's still eyeing him nervously.

"Yeah Dean?"

"I just want you to know…" Sam looks up at him earnestly, those youth-gone lines scrunching up his brow.

"…I've been wrist deep in your crap before. You didn't thank me, you just kept shitting yourself and smiling at me like that was how things were supposed to be. I didn't like it, but I dealed. When we finally got you toilet-trained, I told myself that was the end of it. Made myself a promise, in fact."

Sam mouth drops, then shuts. He starts to say something, maybe verging on an apology (for needing diapers as a baby, for God's sake. Most useless thing he could be apologizing for) but Dean shakes his head so he'll shut up.

"I really, really do not like figuring out what to do with your crap while you grin at me, Sam," he says. "I wish you wouldn't make me. But I've done it before and I know how to do it again. And you know why I would. You got that?"

He hadn't been expecting that one, Dean can tell. "Dean, are you drunk?"

"Nope." Dean says simple. "You think I'd be able reel off a speech that elegant drunk? You're the one who's been boozing all night, drinky. "

"Uh. Okay. In that case, that's," Sam looks confused, but less sad. "…kind of gross. But okay, Dean. Uh. Thanks."

He starts to smile. Like the way he did when he superglued Dean's hand to his beer, like when Dean had him belting out Bon Jovi to keep him from getting too scared.

It's sweet, all right, but Dean can't help thinking Sam shouldn't just think this is funny; he should be crying in utter relief. He done enough to completely revoke Dean giving a good goddamn about his demon-highs butt, and here Dean is telling him he still does.

But it's all right. Because this is bad enough to be a joke: how Dean can still say this to him when Sam hasn't even said one repentant word.

He just isn't all that sorry. Not yet. Dean doesn't know when he will be.

But he'll just have to take that. He knows it's easy to take love for granted. And for himself, he knows hard it is to give it up.

He doesn't have an answer for what'll happen if either ever changes.

So for now, he just says "I'm good Sammy. Swear it. We're good."

Ah hell with it, and there's not much in him fighting reaching over and casually dropping a kiss on Sam's plain brown hair. When he pulls back to take another swig from his bottle—damn, good choice Sammy—he sees that Sam's eyebrows have shot straight up into his bangs.

Dean smiles because he remembers giving Sam shit for his Klingon-sized forehead when he was teen, which was why Sam had kept his hair combed down 90% of the time Dean was around. Even for the first two years back in the Impala's passenger seat, something had compelled Sam to hide that big swath of skin, even if he didn't volunteer reasons.

Once when they were younger Sam had gotten really vicious about it. Dirty looks and balled fists vicious. That was the year that Sam had finally outgrown Dean, and Dean was just waiting for him to take the first swing in a fight, finally. And he hadn't been worried about Sammy winning. He'd been weirdly proud and was looking forward to it, only he fully planned it be about bagging one of Sam's crushes and not about Sammy's friggin hair. So Dean had mollified him by saying he needed it to house all those brains. Something your big brother would know nothing about, haha.

He knows how to knock himself down to make Sam feel better, especially if he knows he's what's making Sam blue.

Because yeah. That's what big brothers will do sometimes.

That's what love will do.

Love'll make a flaming hypocrite out of you. It'll make all the little details matter when you know you should just be able to throw them out instead of letting them take gnaw down your heart to mush.

Love will make you give a kiss on the forehead, and when you do there'll be more of you in that kiss than any other you've given all year. It'll make you pause for a second and think that maybe you're the only who's wanted to kiss him on the forehead for—hey, maybe you're the only one who's ever wanted to? And it'll be ridiculous that you feel good about it.

There is no rule that love will last.

Dean's love for Sam is a fierce, fighting-for-as-with-as-much-desperation-and-determination-as-a-war, will-take-as-many-daggers-to-my-own-heart-for-it-until-I-can't-anymore kind of love.

And when he can't…

Well, can't is can't. You can't negotiate things like that.

But that'll only be after he's exhausted every possible way.

"Dean, I know what you're trying to say. And I-"

Dean holds up a hand.

"Dude. No fucking way."

"But—"

"I'm man enough to say it. You can't take that risk."

Afterwards, Dean guesses it's okay that Sam bit him. He loves the bitch, after all.

Author's Notes:

Why did Sam bite Dean? Because they had delicious hot man-sex afterwards and Sam picked up an oral fixation from all that demon blood. No, they were probably just wrestling or something, but it's not too hard to find people who've done a good job with that other idea.

Yes, I named it after a Taylor Swift song. Why? Because Taylor Swift and Supernatural totally go together. Look up "Taylor Swift Supernatural" on youtube and enjoy the genius pairing of "You Belong With Me" and Wincest.

Ahhh this is one of the ones where I just kept writing until I could stop! It's a compendium of Winchester musings/babblings/snatches of inspiration that took a form more like footnotes than anything else. Sorry it has no concept! After it hit twenty pages, I was like, well shit, I better make this work somehow.


End file.
